[Coco] Of Multi Pak Interfaces...

camillus blockx camillus.b.58 at gmail.com
Wed Mar 25 08:15:20 EDT 2015


Hi arthur,

I was under the impression that only the nibble ( 4 bit ) of the lsb was the slot selection, and the other nibble did the CSC and the Cart lines.  So no problem to select to 8 slots. I was told to take a good look at the buffer chips when 8 slots used. I guess the load would get close to the max. So I wonder if double buffering would be usable, and not be messing with timing. The propagation time would be doubled.   

Correct me if wrong...

camillus
On 3/25/2015 5:21:36 AM, Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu> wrote:
Oops, just remembered that all 8 bits of $FF7F are used for slot selection,
with values of $00, $11, $22, and $33. So I'd guess a 6-slot multipack
would use $44 and $55 to select the additional slots?

Art

On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 6:16 AM, Arthur Flexser wrote:

> Out of curiosity, what would happen if you plugged one multipack into
> another, or more gracefully accomplished the equivalent through a
> connecting ribbon cable? Could one get 7 slots that way, perhaps via some
> minor modifications to the circuitry?
>
> Relatedly, how do 3rd party MPIs with more than 4 slots do slot selection?
> Is bit 2, in addition to bits 0-1 of $FF7F, used?
>
> Art
>
> On Wed, Mar 25, 2015 at 6:05 AM, Rogelio Perea wrote:
>
>> With the recent trend on the MPIs becoming a hot item on Ebay (for one
>> on-line selling venue), I wonder how those who have an MPI on active duty
>> are using it for. Radio Shack pushed the MPI first as a convenient way to
>> switch between Paks. With the accessories that came later the MPI 4 slots
>> could be taken as not enough ;-)
>>
>> I have two on MPIs duty, one with an F board (a 3024 MPI) and one with a
>> CoCo (upgraded 3124). The setup on both is almost the same:
>>
>> Slot 4 - Disk Controller , a 3029 for the CoCo 1 and a FD-502 for the 3
>> Slot 3 - Speech and Sound pak on the CoCo 1, Rulaford Research MIDI on
>> the 3
>> Slot 2 - Orchestra 90 on both for the most time, sort of the wild card
>> slot
>> for both CoCo setups
>> Slot 1 - CoCo SDC, has become the mainstay on both MPIs
>>
>> Beyond this I don't do much Pak swapping, maybe an occasional RS232 here
>> or
>> there, a game once in a while (many on SDC images nowadays). Can say the
>> list above is the official setup.
>>
>>
>> -- RP
>>
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>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
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>>
>
>

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